Teaching

One teaches to get it out of the system.
To work with and digest the teaching.
To train up a band of willing comrades.
To purge yourself of the need to be dictator – didactor.

We have often been visited by students, masters of Tai Chi in their own right, with groups or schools of students themselves, visiting for instruction from JK. What is often difficult for them is to switch from being the teacher there to being the student here. I suspect this is only the case if they are teaching incorrectly. When you work with the teaching you sink into the energy – into your own heart, into the heart of the teaching and into your developing relationship with the teaching. This process inevitably causes insights and revelations to surface. The temptation is always to latch onto these insights and lose touch with the energy from which they emerge. If you do this then you are just constructing another artificial and ultimately disconnected (dead) edifice (Form). The secret is to allow these insights to surface, let them stimulate your spirit, engage with them and work with them, but don't let them carry you away from the source. It is always tempting to cling onto the objects of one's creative impulses whether it be for wealth or fame or just self-gratification. Try instead to be like Li Po – writing poems on dead leaves and casting them to the wind. Then the process of creation (of letting out and expressing the energy) will be healthy, enriching and will take you deeper, but more importantly it will leave you clear of congestion – you will be a better instrument for use, by your teacher and your students.